Capgemini joins the 'cautious outlook' brigade...and receives yet more Indian takeaway rumours

I won't try to summarise Capgemini's results for the year to 31st Dec 07 because my ex Ovum Holway colleague Kate Hanaghan did it so well in her Capgemini margin up, but growth predictions cautious post. 9% historic organic growth is very good. In the light of the market forecasts, so is the outlook of '2-5%' growth for 2008. Indeed, given the entirely predictable slowdown at HMRC, if they do make 5% Capgemini will have performed very well. But Paul Hermilin (Capgemini's CEO) acknowledged that “It is not inconceivable that the difficulties of the banking sector will end up spreading to the whole economy and reach our own disciplines.” See 'Building a Global Powerhouse' for Businessweek interview with Paul Hermilin

The Times also revealed that Capgemini holds takeover talks with India's Reliance Communications. Yet again I doubt the credence of this story as it comes hot on the heels of a similar ones in the last few months relating to Capgemini and Wipro and Capgemini and Infosys. As then, I still find it very difficult to seriously contemplete any Indian company wanting to take over a basically French IT Services player. If someone can explain why they would want to do this, please tell me!

Paul Hermilin obviously agrees telling Businessweek "There's a journalist in India, from the Economic Times, who loves this kind of story. It's the third time he has written about us talking with an Indian company. I don't know why he has a Capgemini obsession. The thing is, Reliance closed a major alliance with Accenture. So if there's one Indian company that would never even talk to us, it's Reliance. The guy is not aware."

Anyway, it all helped Capgemini shares which ended the day around 10% higher at Euro37.6.